Thursday, September 10, 2015

What's that Big Mountain Called, Really?

Name a well-known U.S. geographical place — two words; five letters in
the first word, six letters in the last — that contains all five vowels
(A, E, I, O and U) exactly once. It's a place that's been in the news.
What is it?

I've looked and the news coverage, and as as far as I can tell, the mountain formerly known as "Mount McKinley" is now known as "Denali." Not, as this puzzle would suggest, MOUNT DENALI. If someone has evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it.

I figured the puzzle out because Wiki has an entry for "Mount Rainer" which is a misspelling for Mount Rainier. I asked Ross to find all the incidences of place names in the US that satisfy the terms of this puzzle. Here they are (five also have a single Y):

Aiken County [in South Carolina]

Amite County [in Mississippi]

Davie County [in North Carolina]

House Island [in several states]

Mount Bailey [in several states]

Mount Bassie [in Alaska]

Mount Daniel [in Washington]

Mount Gilead [in several states]

Mount Hygeia [in Rhode Island]

Mount Mageik [in Alaska]

Mount McAdie [in California]

Mount Raimer [straddling Massachusetts and New York]

Mouse Island [in Ohio]

Outer Island [in several states]

Sousa Bridge [in D.C.]

South Vienna [in Ohio]

Union Chapel [in several states]

Union Tavern [in North Carolina]

Union Valley [in several states]

No matter how many words in its new official name, it's a gorgeous sight:

Our tie-break rule: In
the event that a single round number is announced with a qualifier such
as "about" or "around" (e.g., "We received around 1,200 entries."), the
prize goes to the person who picked the range that includes that
specific number.